I Will Remember
by fleau
Summary: WWII AU. Levi and Erwin are reincarnated, Levi as a French Jew (with no memory of his past life) and Erwin as a German soldier (who remembers everything).
1. Chapter 1

It was the summer of 1940. Military propaganda littered the streets; posters with swastikas and German slogans splashed across them in messy, unorganized paint were plastered onto the bricks, along with various graffiti expressing the extreme discomfort of the people. Billboards boasted loud colors, telling people to _support France in the war!_, _Join the army!_, and various other promotions to which no one in the town really paid much attention.

The once majestic, outstanding buildings that littered the streets now appeared so dull, so utterly lifeless; the entire town may as well have not existed at all. They had been defiled brick by brick, defaced by both those who were loyal to the Nazi party and those who were not. Bright red swastikas were oozing onto the sidewalks, an ironically justified type of graffiti that was illegal to even speak negatively about.

And to think France had been completely free only a week before.

The men were shrouded in thunder. They marched, perfectly in step, through the streets of Paris, a grotesque parade of monochromatic sheep that followed no one except their beloved shepherd, the Führer, who kept their ever-forward gaze clouded with ignorance, anti-Semitism, and hatred. Their boots resounded through the city, booming and rumbling like a rainstorm. To most of the French citizens that clogged the streets, their bodies pressed together in anticipation for the procession, they looked marvelous, like the soldiers in the cinema. To others, however, watching from the window of their dingy one-bedroom apartment, the men appeared as puppets on sharp German strings. Like dolls. Terrifying, brainwashed dolls.

Driven forward without resistance.

From the window of that dingy apartment, a woman and her son watched in horror as the Nazis marched through the streets they called home. Absently, she reached up with a shaky hand, and gripped the begrimed yellow star pinned to her sleeve, cursing under her breath and pulling the curtains shut with fervor.

They needed to leave, and they needed to leave now.

"Mon petit," she murmured to her son, who was still standing by the window, staring at the cheap fabric of the curtains. "Levi."

A soldier below stopped and turned, staring up at the window, and shouted something in German. Suddenly every Nazi halted and turned towards the pair in the apartment, as did the crowd, and they stared, and they laughed.

"Levi!"

The man at the window jolted suddenly, realizing that it had been a daydream.

Just to be sure, he pulled the heavy curtain back just a bit and peeked outside, a sick sense of relief washing over him when he saw that the Germans still marched ever onward, paying no attention to the insects they crushed beneath their polished boots.

"Go get your father," The woman commanded, and the man obeyed, letting his pale fingertips release the curtains, finding it difficult to move them at all as they trembled.

"_Oui, maman_," He murmured, maneuvering through the narrow walkways and steep insteps of his apartment (which was hidden behind the apartment of another man, who had been gracious enough to hide them from the rest of Paris, even though it had not come under Nazi occupation yet).

At least, it hadn't when they had moved in.

Levi's hands shook with anxiety, making it difficult for him to grasp the rusted brass doorknob to his father's study. He had to wrap his left (and equally unsteady) hand around the wrist of his right in order to steady himself enough to open the door, without knocking. Initially, his father was annoyed, and looked up, ready to reprimand his son for the interruption, but his words caught in his throat when he saw the expression of utter helplessness plastered onto his son's pallid face.

"Papa," Levi started, voice shaking just as much as his hands. "They've occupied Paris."

At this point, I feel that I should bring a few things to your attention. The first of which being that Levi's family was Jewish. Obviously. It was just the three of them: 19-year-old Levi, the son, Leah, the mother, and Jacob, the father. Initially they had owned a vineyard, but after they were forced to move, they struggled to eat more than once a day.

Levi's family had lived in Bordeaux until 1939, when it was rumored to be turned into a German military outpost (and it had been, so thank God the family had escaped when they did), and their salvation had come in the form of a family friend who happened to have a studio apartment as an extension to his own. The hidden apartment was small, had no hot water, and only one window, but it was still better than a concentration camp. And for that, the family was thankful.

Up until then, they had been living quiet, devout lives. Of course, even with the Nazis there, their lives were still rather devout; only now, they would be killed for it.

"What?" Jacob rose slowly from his seat, staring into his son's face with utter disbelief. "What did you just say?"

"The Germans, Papa," Levi repeated, gripping the doorknob so hard that his knuckles turned white. "They're here."

Jacob was slow to move at first, passing Levi in the doorway and making his way towards the kitchen, where Leah stood, hunched over the sink, feeling more nauseous than she had ever felt in her life. Her husband went to her, tried to console her with gentle touches and hollow words, and from the hallway Levi could see that his father wove sentences meant more to soothe himself than to soothe his wife.

There was not a sound in the world more terrifying than the knock on the door that resounded through the tiny apartment. Everyone froze, staring in disbelief at the slab of wood, the only thing protecting them from the segregation of the outside world.

Again, someone knocked.

Finally, Levi moved, his frozen muscles giving him just enough leeway to step forward and unlock the door, swinging it open.

There stood their salvation, Émile Chaput. The man who had taken them in when they were at their weakest.

The man was tall. Taller than Levi (then again, most people were), and he stepped in without an invitation. Jacob turned and opened his mouth to speak, but Émile silenced him with a raised hand. "I know what happened," was all he said.

He stayed in their apartment for three and a half hours that night, telling the family that France had surrendered the Northern half of its country to Germany, and that Paris was included in that Northern half. Just like that, the government had signed a treaty, and given up half of their country.

Just like that, with nothing but black ink and a quill pen, their own country had signed away their lives.

Just like that.

Leah began to sob into her hands, and repeatedly, Levi had to leave the room to grab her a new handkerchief.

Émile assured them that he would keep them safe.

"I will get you out of here, to Lyon, in the free half of France," he promised. "I can have the tickets by tonight, and you can leave tomorrow morning. Bring nothing with you."

Jacob thanked him repeatedly, and embraced him one last time before the man left for several hours. An uncomfortable silence blanketed the apartment, and the family sat beneath the weight of trepidation, wondering which breath might be their last. When their salvation returned, none of them had moved from the spaces they were in when he had left. Émile opened their front door, tickets in hand, and watched as three heads turned towards him.

"I've got the tickets," He said, placing them on a table by the door and turning to leave. "You leave at six a.m."

It was Émile who took them to the train station the next morning as well. The three of them brought nothing, as they were instructed. Levi had taken a photo of his mother and father, and stuffed it in the breast pocket of his coat before they had left their apartment for the last time. His father had brought all the money they had (which was not much). The only thing the trio clutched in their shivering hands as they boarded the train that morning were their tickets.

Levi stared at it as it sat in his lap on the way there. There was something written in German on his father's ticket, but it was a language that no one in their tiny family spoke. Levi found this odd, considering that their salvation had no idea how to speak German (or so they thought). But no one else besides him could have written it.

As the tickets were punched and handed back, Jacob noticed the way Levi eyed the ticket in his hands, and asked if he wanted to trade.

"Yes," Replied his son, and that was the last thing Levi said to his father before he fell asleep.

The train did not go to Lyon, as Émile had said it was going to. Instead, the train pulled into a station in Munich, Germany, and Levi was startled awake by the sound of barking dogs and German curses.

His father was the first one off of the train, and they shot him right in the head, laughing as he fell dead onto the platform, and as Leah stumbled out next, cradling her dead husband's head in her arms. "German filth!" She shouted, in French, black eyes burning with rage that Levi had never seen before. The boy himself was still glued to the floor of the train, eyes wide, body trembling as the soldiers dragged his mother by her hair to a truck that waited just outside the station.

The last thing Levi saw was the swatstika sewn into the sleeves of each soldier, and the bloodied yellow Star of David on his mother's chest.

Then he ran. And he ran until his chest felt like it was about to burst, like the German air around him was made of poison, suffocating him, stuffing his lungs with discrimination and hatred until he could no longer breathe. Levi braced himself against a building, having stopped in an alleyway, amongst dumpsters and trash heaps. Right where he belonged. His legs trembled, and he fell to his knees, leaning forward and vomiting until his stomach had nothing left to expel, and then once more for good measure.

His father was dead.

His mother was taken away and he had abandoned her.

The Jew stood once more, shaking like a beaten dog, and turned to exit the alley, to keep running, to find somewhere, anywhere to hide. But three boys that couldn't have been more than two years younger than him blocked his escape.

They spoke German. Words that the Jew did not understand. And then suddenly two of them were holding him down against the wall, ripping off his overcoat and slinging it over their shoulders. For a moment it looked as though they were about to leave him there just like that, but then the tallest of the three spotted the pristine, milky white skin of Levi's wrist.

And they sneered.

Levi did not remember what happened next. He woke up in a bed, on his back, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling and wondering where the hell he was.

A dull pain in his wrist prompted him to sit up and examine it. And there, on his wrist, a bloody, swollen swatstika had been branded into his skin. And the puss that leaked from the holes burned into his flesh told him that it was infected.

The Jew swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up, wobbly on his feet. Where was he, and what was he doing here? Where was his mother, his father?

He stumbled around for a few minutes before he found a flight of stairs, and upon them sat a woman with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. She smiled at him, and said something in German, to which he replied, "_Je ne parle allemande_."

"English?" Her accent was heavy, but he understood her just the same.

"Yes," he said, and waited for her to respond. She sat for a moment and thought, trying to bring the words she needed to the tip of her tongue.

"I found you in the street," she began, and suddenly, all of the memories of his arrival in Germany came flooding back to him, and he was unable to stop himself from turning and vomiting into a bucket that lay at his feet.

_She found me in the street._

The woman didn't seem surprised at all by his reaction, and stayed on the stairs, standing this time. She was shorter than he was, by a few inches, but it was hard to tell when he was doubled over a bucket.

"My name is Petra," She said. "My husband and I found you and brought you here. Don't come upstairs, the soldiers might see you."

And that was when Levi realized that this woman was risking her life to save some dirty, homeless kid that she had found in an alley. He was wearing his star, still, that faded yellow thing that read "_Juif_" like a cattle brand. She had known he was Jewish. And yet she had still brought him out of the streets, and into her home, hiding him down below her floorboards into a bomb shelter. How they had carried him all the way there so inconspicuously was beyond him.

Levi was still shaking when he stood again, trying to collect himself, and doing a fine job of pretending that he had.

"Thank you," He said. "I'll leave tonight."

She shot him a glare. "No, you're not leaving at all. Do you have any idea what's waiting for you out there?"

"I've got a pretty good idea." He spit once more into the bucket and stood up again, keeping his footing his time.

"You're staying here, and that's final." She turned and stomped up the stairs before he had a chance to argue.

The door shut, and everything was black again.

And suddenly, Levi became acutely aware of just how alone he really was. There was no one here with him, no one to save him. No one to hold him close and console him, tell him it was going to be alright. It was like a dream. It did not feel real.

He reached out into the darkness, his hand falling against the cold stone walls of the shelter, and staying there. He was alive. He remained alive, and safe, while his father was dead and his mother was taken to God knows where.

It made him ache, to know that he had abandoned her. Made his gut twist in agony and bring forth the urge to vomit again.

He hadn't even said goodbye.

Levi wanted to reach into his coat and take out the picture of his family, even though he could not see it. The realization that his coat and his picture were gone made a lump form in his throat. He slipped his hand into the pocket of his trousers instead and ran his fingers over his father's train ticket, tears forming at the corners of his eyes and cascading down his cheeks. He was alone.

Or was he?

Immediately, he dipped his head in a small prayer, asking God why the hell He had done this. Levi had been nothing but good, nothing but loyal. Was this his reward?

"Do you even exist?" The question fell from his lips like venom, and his voice echoed off of the stone walls that surrounded him. "Do you even care?"

Then he lifted his head again, staring into black.

Levi stood there, in the darkness, contemplating the power of God.

He could give, and He could take, and in this case, He had done both.

Notes:  
AAAAAH sorry this chapter is short and not very good ugh. I'm really nervous about posting this. Gdi. Please don't kill me, I swear, I did research for this fic for like 3 months before I even started writing.

INSPIRED BY THIS LOVELY ERERI FANART post/62026607176/the-usual-reincarnation-thingy-world-war-ii and yes I did ask the artist for permission, though I'm not sure if she'll be happy with my pairing choice ;;


	2. Chapter 2

It had been exactly three months since the Jewish vagrant had arrived and been taken in by Petra and Auruo Bossard, stowed away beneath the floorboards of a little house in Munich, Germany. He remained beneath the house in a hidden cellar, intended to be used for storage of extra food and things, which was no bigger than eight by ten feet, with a six-foot ceiling. With the ridiculous food rations implemented by the German government, all of the food that they received in a month could not fill up more than a quarter of the little space below the house. It left more than enough room for the vagabond.

Over the brief few months of Levi's little sojourn, the burned flesh of his wrist had become grotesquely infected, spitting pus and blood and putrescence whenever it was touched. The family had not noticed. Or, at least, the Jew hoped that they hadn't; they were already risking their lives to keep him hidden away in their home—the least he could do was lessen their worries, and lie about his health. Either way, their medical rations were mediocre at best, so it wasn't like they had much help to offer in the first place.

When fever kept him awake at night, he would simply lay against the ground, and press his cheek into the cool concrete beneath him.

There was only one way in and out of the cellar: a small trapdoor, which was hidden beneath a rug in the Bossard's living room. Often, during the evening, Petra would leave the door open for the Jew inside, to try in vain to filter out the pungent air that blanketed the crypt. Of course, Levi was never allowed outside. He was forbidden from even standing on the stairs.

He defecated in a bucket (the very same that he had gagged into upon his first arrival) that was emptied once or twice every few days. It didn't matter how many times Auruo emptied it—the stench remained, and did nothing but deteriorate the Jew's health.

As for meals, Petra was barely rationed enough to feed herself and her husband, let alone the little secret that was tucked away beneath her feet. Levi did not ask for food. He did not have the right to demand anything from these people; they had taken him in, housed him, saved his life (though he wondered if this incarceration constituted "living"), and were risking their lives to keep him. He did not have the right to be picky.

He was lucky that he even got the scraps of bread and soup that he did, and he knew it. So he nibbled on the food, and thanked the family above him constantly.

Between bouts of fever, Levi often found himself thinking that surely his death would be a benefactor to his two saviors—their only problem would be finding a way to dispose of his body.

He still prayed twice a day, and before his meals, whenever he thought about it, but always ended the prayers with the same question—"Can you even hear me?" Believing is seeing—that was the definition of faith, and he knew it. He asked for forgiveness for his doubt constantly, trying to convince himself that God worked in mysterious ways, and that soon, all would be well.

Levi prayed for the Bossards far more than he ever prayed for himself. He asked for them to be blessed for their good deeds, and for them to be fed, for them to be safe when everything was over.

The Jew found himself kneeling on the steps most hours of the day, asking impossible questions of a deity who may as well not exist at all.

Petra often opened the trapdoor and found him kneeling there on the bottom step, bowing his head so low that his nose nearly brushed against the rough wood of the stairway, muttering words in a language that she did not understand.

"… What are you doing?" She asked once, finally, holding a small bowl of soup in her hands.

Levi did not respond for several more seconds, and eventually lifted his head to look at her. "I was saying the Hashkiveinu," He responded, rolling his eyes when he noticed the confused look on her face. "It's a prayer. In Hebrew."

"You speak Hebrew?"

"Of course I speak Hebrew," A small pang of guilt shot through the man when he noticed the split second of offense on Petra's face, and apologized immediately. "Sorry—" He began, and was cut off by the woman's reply.

"Mm, no, it's fine," She told him with a warm smile, setting the bowl on the steps, and sitting down next to it. "What's the Hashkiveinu?"

"It's sort of like a bedtime prayer. You say it before you sleep."

"But it's the middle of the day. Were you going to take a nap?"

His silence was vaguely unsettling, and that was when the redhead on the steps noticed just how unwell the Jew looked; he was pale (more so than usual), and his eyes were rimmed with dark black and purple discoloration, the rest of his pallid skin coated in a light sheen of sweat. His fingers were bony, as was the rest of him, and his clothes hung off of his emaciated frame like rotting flesh from a corpse.

The smile faded from her face.

"… You think you're going to die." It was not a question.

Again, the Jew said nothing, only took the small bowl of soup from the steps and brought it to his lips, sipping the warm liquid gingerly, like it would burn him if he ate too fast. The two of them were silent for several more minutes while Levi finished the rest of his soup. When he handed the bowl back to her, she took it from him solemnly, and stood up to return it to the kitchen, but stopped moving entirely when Levi muttered something.

"What was that?" She asked, hazel eyes burning with emotions that she could not describe.

"I said that kneeling all day is painful," He replied, mercury hues shifting to fall upon the woman's face. "And that there doesn't seem to be a point."

"Then why do you do it?"

"I've been asking myself that question for three months."

The redhead swallowed thickly and did not reply. The two of them stood in silence for what seemed like years, until the Jew finally turned his head and returned to the darkness of the cellar, where he belonged.

Levi was not fed for three more days after that. Not because of his previous conversation with Petra, but because the couple upstairs barely had enough to feed themselves (they didn't eat much more than he did those three days). Petra had come down once or twice to check on him, and ask him if he was doing alright, to which he replied, "As good as I'll ever be."

On the first of the month they received their new ration card, and Petra opened the cellar door to bring Levi a bit of bread and cheese.

"Guten tag!" She called cheerfully down the steps, and hesitated a few moments in anticipation, visibly paling when there was no response. Not even a rustle of the sheets, as there usually was.

The redhead allowed the trapdoor to swing all the way open and remain as such as she climbed hesitantly down the creaky staircase, each groan of the wood beneath her weight echoing through the little room below, making it sound empty. Her heart made a great leap into her throat when she realized that it might as well be.

Silently, the woman set the small meal down on the steps, and continued to make her way down the staircase into the cold, dark basement below. Her fingertips trembled as she reached out to grasp the small chain that hung from the ceiling, tugging on it to allow the old, dim light bulb to illuminate what it could.

Petra was afraid to look around the room. More because of her selfishness than anything else; she did not want to find Levi dead. Not because he meant something to her (though he did, don't misunderstand), but because she would have no way to dispose of the body. For the rest of her life, she would be reminded that she failed to save yet another innocent man, and be forced to let him rot in her basement until someone smelled his rancid flesh upon entering her house.

So, because of these thoughts swimming in her head, the redhead stood there for several moments, slender fingers curled around the chain, gripping it hard, completely alone.

Slowly, she turned around, eyes scanning the room for anything that vaguely resembled life, as if she were afraid of what she might find—afraid that he _was_ alive.

"Hello?" She called again, and her feet bolted to the floor as soon as she was facing the wall, keeping her in a fixed position and facing the cold brick of the basement instead of turning around to face the reality of the rest of the room. She had not yet brought herself to look upon the bed. She was terrified of what she would find.

Suddenly the air seemed so much heavier, and Petra briefly understood what it was like for the Jew down in that basement, with the weight of the world upon his shoulders, and no other company but his God and his mind.

"Please say something." She murmured softly, burying her face in her hands. "Please…" She would have said his name just then, but it suddenly dawned on her that she did not know it. She had barricaded him in a room, letting him fester beneath her feet, feeding him scraps for three months and had not even bothered to ask for his name.

A soft grunt from the corner of the room snapped the redhead out of her stupor, and she whipped around, blue eyes falling upon the little crumpled form on the cot.

"… Petra?" His voice was shaky and uncertain. The feverish delirium was painfully evident.

"I'm here!" She called, perhaps a little too loud, as she stumbled through the cluttered basement and over to the bed in the corner. "I'm here, it's alright. You're alright."

"Do I look alright to you?"

No. No, he didn't. His normally pallid skin had paled even more, blue and green veins crawling over his skin, which clung to his bones like cheap fabric. His cheekbones had been sharp when he had arrived, but now they were even sharper, and his cheeks were hollow, sucked inwards toward a mouth that he never used for anything more than prayer and the occasional conversation.

"Yes, of course!"

"Don't bullshit me, Petra."

She bit her lip. "… Alright, maybe not so good."

"I feel like shit," He murmured, clutching his damp forehead with a clammy hand. "I didn't even hear you come in."

As the Jew lifted his hand to wipe his hair from his forehead, Petra caught a glimpse of the wound on his wrist; swollen and red and irritated, and her mouth fell agape.

"What the_ hell_ is that?" She inquired fiercely, narrowing her eyes and wrapping her hand around his forearm, squeezing, watching him cry out beneath her in pain. "Why didn't you tell me about this? You're _dying!_"

"That doesn't matter!" He shouted back at her, trying in vain to wriggle out of her grasp, forcing dark-colored blood and pus to ooze from his wound and onto Petra's fingers. "I'll die no matter where I am, so who cares?"

A harsh smack to the face quieted him almost instantly. Petra glared down at him, her grip on his arm relentless and firm. "_I_ care. I dragged you almost a mile from that alleyway into my basement and I save my only food for you _every week,_ so don't you _dare_ tell me that no one cares. I'm trying to keep you alive, and I'll be damned if I'll let your victim complex get in my way."

Levi glared at the redhead above him, though his protesting had ceased. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, relaxing in her grip just a tad. His distrust in her was painfully evident in every move he made, every breath he took, and it made the poor woman's heart ache, but she did not relent in her pursuit of his trust.

Slowly, she let her fingers unfurl from around his paper-thin forearm, wiping the infection from her fingers with a handkerchief. "Auruo knows a little first aid, and we have whiskey to clean it. Don't ask where we got it, we've had it for a long time. I'll go get him, and we are going to clean this." She pointed angrily at the burn on his arm, turning and leaving the basement without waiting for a reply.

It took them almost an hour just to bring his fever down enough to get coherent sentences from him. They packed snow from outside into buckets and brought those downstairs, pressing it to the nape of his neck, his wrists, and the backs of his knees, force-feeding him whatever water they had on hand. When the man had calmed down enough, Auruo began asking him his questions: When did this happen? With what were you burned?

The replies were short, disinterested, coated with fever. But Auruo found out what he needed to, and then asked Petra to press snow onto the wound until Levi could no longer feel it. Not that it really mattered; it had probably hurt far more for the past few months than it would now. The couple catered to the little vagabond left and right, cutting open his wrist to squeeze out the puss, pouring their alcohol onto it, holding him while he writhed.

Nearly a week later, and the infection was no better than it had been. They had waited far too long to treat it, and they didn't have the medical supplies necessary to do so. Levi's clothes were always damp, and they could not risk bringing him upstairs to bathe him until late at night. When they finally did get him clean, he seemed to relax a lot more.

Every day, they came downstairs to squeeze the puss from the wound, to clean it, and dress it as best they could. It was a slow process, and Levi's condition only seemed to be worsening as time went on.

Soon, he was unable to stand unassisted, and within a week after that, he was unable to stand at all. He was staring Death in the face, just as he had been when he'd arrived; but now, his cold, dark clutches seemed to be so much closer, so much more real. There was no God to save him now.

Petra moved his cot closer to the door, next to the stairs, so that it was easier to access him when it was needed, and also so that he had more fresh air whenever they left the trapdoor open. Levi had ceased to pray. Mostly because he had forgotten, but also because he felt as though there were no longer a point. He laid in his bed at night, staring at the dark ceiling, the silence blanketing his ears and making them ring.

"Fuck you," He said quietly to himself one night (or maybe it were morning, or afternoon), hands balling weakly into fists at his sides. "Fuck you. All I've ever been is loyal, and faithful, and now, the only time I've ever _needed_ you, it turns out that you don't actually give a shit. We're not your children._ I'm_ not your child. You're not going to save me, and neither is anyone else."

Just then, the trapdoor swung open, and Levi turned his head to greet Petra. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the bright light, and when they finally focused, the man who stood, shrouded in the light of the entryway, was not Petra, nor Auruo. The first thing that Levi noticed was the bright red-and-black swastika pinned to a green uniform sleeve, and the second thing he noticed was the sickeningly familiar boots, black and shining like a diamond.

There were unfamiliar voices echoing throughout the hallway behind the soldier, and Levi was unable to move, still frozen in place.

"_Erwin Sturmbannführer_!" There was a shout from behind the man, who turned his gaze from the Jew to the three men behind him. "_Hast du nichts finden? _Did you find anything?"

The man turned his head back to Levi, and for a moment, he looked just as frightened as the little vagabond at his feet was. He hesitated a moment, not breaking eye contact with Levi. With tears in his eyes, Levi mouthed a single word: Please.

"_Nein, nichts wichtiges_," The soldier replied, letting the trapdoor swing shut again. "Nothing important. We're finished here."


End file.
